Extreme Weather Alert! – GEOSTORM MOVIE REVIEW

Geostorm is a classic popcorn blockbuster action movie that has a big helping of disaster movie and sci-fi trimmings added on. Starring Gerard Butler and set in the not to distant future (events kick off in 2019); Geostorm has a great message in that if we as a planet can realize that our future is everyone’s future, then perhaps we can band together and make that future a bit more secure; making Geostorm a really great ad for waking the f@*k up about climate change and fractured geo-politics.

Visual effects in this type of a big-budget disaster movie are often the concern, but Geostorm handles epic extreme weather visuals as well as beautiful, spine-tingling space station sequences with a slick and detailed look and I was buying in. Geostorm makes a great effort to create itself as an international film with a global, one world vision…even if little ol’ New Zealand and Australia and strangely Canada don’t show up to the world party and obviously SO many more nations but you get the idea, we’re all on board, climate change = boo. You know, clearly terrible blockbuster disaster movies are…clearly terrible and Geostorm was not one of those for me! I enjoyed 2012 and San Andreas a whole lot and if you liked those too, then I think Geostorm is going to give you what you’re looking for and add in some cool space adventures to boot.

My Geostorm performance highlight has to be awesome Aussie Abbie Cornish as Sarah, she’s a high level U.S. Secret Service operative who kicks so much ass, is independent, savvy, fun, level-headed yet still warm and is able to hold down a relationship while doing her job really well – aka…a well written woman character; and for me to find one of those in an action-disaster blockbuster makes me pretty happy! Sidebar: the chemistry between Abbie Cornish and Jim Sturgess is believable and that helps to cut to the trust they have in each other; and we have in them as characters too, win!

Extreme weather conditions in Geostorm. Image via scifiaddicts.com

Geostorm is a nice piece of well messaged escapism; it’s got all of those themes in there that can allow the viewer to maybe take something away from it and help with the things that are going on in their life. A tense brother-to-brother power struggle relationship (Butler and Sturgess), a redemptive divorced dad and daughter story arc flourish, some nice camraderie between Butler and his on-space station maybe love interest, maybe awesome platonic buddy Una Fassbender (Alexandra Maria Lara). Andy Garcia is the gravitas laden and suave POTUS I think the U.S. might secretly wish they had; and a big “Yas girl” to Talitha Bateman (who I thought slayed in Annabelle Creation earlier this year); in the role of Butler’s daughter, Hannah. Bateman brings a whole lot more dimension to her role than you’d expect in this kind of genre and that’s rad.

So what do you reckon? Geostorm sound like a movie you’d wanna escape into? Let me know in the comments below and tell me what other Gerard Butler movies you love